As the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit +5 coming up in September and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November, this paper published by UNDP/ APDIP seeks to examine some of the key issues and developments that have taken place in the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) within the larger scheme of national developmental policies.
This note examines the treatment of ICT in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) of Asia-Pacific countries. PRSPs serve as a good starting point because they direct the focus of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) concessional lending. Countries have more incentive to prioritize their development needs rather than produce a laundry list of reforms. Although only eight countries in the region have completed PRSPs (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Viet Nam), the results in relation to the use on ICT were revealing and
insightful.
The paper is available here.
|
